Are you one of those people who turns up your nose at Christmas novels?

Take it from a dyed-in-the-wool snob: Wally Lamb has the kind of literary talent to turn “Wishin’ and Hopin’ ” into a book that will make a believer out of you.

Or, at the very least, a believer in holiday hilarity.

In his fourth novel, the author takes readers on a journey back into the mid-1960s, when LBJ was in the White House, every 10-year-old owned a whoopie cushion and the cake from an Easy Bake Oven still actually tasted like real cake.

Readers wishing to curl up with vintage Lamb will naturally find this far less edgy than his usual fare. Still, his plot twists come as shockers, albeit shockers that rank high on the cozy meter.

For example, Felix wins himself fans when he finally brings about his teacher’s long-awaited nervous breakdown with one little BB aimed heavenwards.

When his weapon unexpectedly awakened a slumbering bat, “Sister began screaming about the devil. I was momentarily taken aback by this. I’d known that Bela Lugosi, Grandpa Munster, and other vampires could transform themselves into bats, but I’d not been aware that the Prince of Darkness could perform that particular parlor trick, too.”

Soon bats and Sister Dymphna will be long-forgotten. After a lifetime of anti-communist rhetoric and drills to “duck and cover” in the event of nuclear war, the children of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial school are stunned when a girl from the Soviet Union joins their class to create new rivalries and unexpected romance.

Any great parochial school holiday story demands a Christmas pageant, and Felix’s fifth-grade class prepares to put on a play titled “Jesus is the Reason for the Season,” whereby enough G-rated tomfoolery ensues to make the most agnostic reader chuckle.

Even if the book feels formulaic at times, Lamb’s rich panoply of era-appropriate details — Pillsbury Bake-Offs for mom, orange-juice-can curlers for the sisters — render this delicious Christmas novel first-rate escapism just begging for a comforter and cup of tea.

Andrea Hoag is a Lawrence, Kan., book critic.

FICTION

Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story

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